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This is the moment all of Trump’s anti-media rhetoric has been working toward

Don’t believe your eyes and ears. Believe only me. That has been President Trump’s message to the public for the past two years, pounded in without a break: The press is the enemy. The news is fake. President Donald Trump has done his best to prepare the ground for a moment like Aug 21. In a divided, disbelieving nation, will this really turn out to be the epic moment it looks like? Or will Trump’s intense, years-long campaign to undermine the media — and truth itself — pay off now, in the clutch?

After all, this ugly saga will reach its resolution in the court of public opinion, as political matters often do: in the midterm elections, in the will of Congress, in the ways that citizens talk to their representatives in their home districts. “If what we learned today doesn’t matter to people, what will?” asked CNN's Chris Cuomo. It’s an excellent question, and the answer may be “almost nothing.”